Jaeho JIN, Yongjae KIM, & Wongi SU: Penn Station has very small volume and disconnected with Madison Square Garden (MSG) and other programs above the ground. So, the main issue was how the station and MSG have a new connection and how we can make maximized volume of the station still keeping the MSG at the existing site. . . .

Angela HUANG: The proposal is a mixed-use of retail, hotel and residential apartment project that is looking to reinvent the identity of the brands, the user’s experience, and to breed a new type of shopping experience through notions of elegance and fluidity.

Related Companies, New York’s premier residential developer, today announced that it has commissioned world renowned Zaha Hadid Architects to design a boutique condominium adjacent to the High Line at 520 West 28th Street in Chelsea just south of Hudson Yards. The 11-story residential development will mark Hadid’s first commission in New York City, leaving an indelible mark on the High Line’s architecture map and continuing Related’s storied history of partnering with world-class architects and designers.

This weekend (April 27-28), New Habitat will be hosting a hackathon as part of the Ideas City Festival that will present architecture as an “API” to be hacked. The hackathon will mobilize a diverse group of architects, designers, artists, engineers, and technologists by providing the designs for a proposed building in New York City to be hacked away at, into and through to new ideas for domestic living.

Toshiki HIRANO: In the world of capitalism, buildings’ values are determined on how much inhabitable space they have—which is to say, Total floor Area. Based on this logic, slab has been put in higher hierarchy among other elements in architecture since modernism, and a notion of stacking floor slabs has been the smartest technology of increasing the building value for maximizing the total floor area while minimizing the amount of structures and envelope area.

Lydia Kallipoliti, Asst. Prof. Adj, at The Cooper Union, will present her research on the history of ecological theory as exhibited on the online archive of ecological theory material experiments that she created, ecoredux.com. A discussion, “Recycling the Archive,” will follow with Eva Franch i Gilabert, director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture and curator of the show “Past-Present-Futures.”

kais AL-RAWI, julia KOERNER, & marie BOLTENSTERN: This project demonstrates research and development of a single architectural system that addresses through its variation architectural conditions within an urban context, containing diverse programmatic changes. The variations are created through the use of efficient closest packing geometries within a cellular system that varies in gradients of size, porosity, thickness and layers.

The Yards ///
Manhattan’s West Side has a character all its own. In examining the Western edge condition, affinities with building typologies of particular scale and program began to emerge, where the city’s anomalies and irregularities convene. This is where the streets protrude as piers into the water, where several strip clubs have opened, where sports are played in multi-purpose parking lots, where the hulking mass of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum is permanently docked.

emanuel ADMASSU, DeMar JONES, & gary McGAHA: New York City’s transient nature makes it a territory of infinite complexities. But the definitive layout constraints of the grid, provide opportunities for horizontal and vertical expansion. The generic grid is reinterpreted as a platform to be appropriated according to the diverse needs of its inhabitants. In order to maximize the potential for change, the structure adapts itself to multiple possibilities.

conner CALLAHAN: Manhattan is a contradiction, and its SUPERCELL megastructure, conflicted—an exterior that is highly public in its embracement of the community, but an interior geometry and program that is introverted and rejects its surrounding context. The design physically reveals a dichotomy and offers a playful critique of balancing outward versus inward agendas, while offering a destination to both engage and retreat from Manhattan.